Miss of 2017 – Essential Phone

30 Dec 17

There isn’t much in the Android sphere that generally turns my head but the announcement of the Essential Phone did. Essential, the company that made the phone was under the instruction of Android co-founder Andy Rubin. who was also instrumental in its design.

The look and feel of the device was gorgeous and it did have the notch issue suffered by the iPhone X but I think Essential’s implementation was better executed.

The problem was that the launch was rushed to get it to market before this year’s new iPhones. There were a few problems but the most reported was the poor performance of the camera. Now this was more of a software issue than a hardware one. But trigger happy review sites concentrated on this more than what was great about the phone. And by the time Essential rectified the problem the blogs had moved on and we were then into full iPhone cycle and even worse sandwiched between a certain Galaxy Note.

Essential was then forced to slash the price of the device due to appalling sales figures. But if you listen to those who revisited the phone after the software fixes were put in place they maintain that this is still one of the best Android phones on the market but not in time to rescue it from its impending doom.

It would have been great to see how it compared if it didn’t have those problems at launch and I would have loved to see how their range of add-on accessories panned out.

Certainly a miss for Essential and maybe to the detriment of Android going forward.